Barnstable volunteers building hope in wake of Katrina

Tuesday

Last year. I mentioned in these pages my trip of a lifetime to the Galapagos Islands. I am about to embark on another trip of a lifetime of a different sort.

Last fall, Judy and Peter Scarafile, two members of my parish at St Mary’s Episcopal Church in Barnstable, embarked on a working trip to Slidell, La. Both are enthusiastically immersed in baseball – Judy as the head of the Cape Cod Baseball League and Peter as director of the Hyannis Mets – so one would think October would find them at the World Series cheering on our Red Sox. Instead, they spent their evenings elbow to elbow with Yankee fans watching big screen TV in a hotel bar in Slidell. Their days were spent shoulder to shoulder with workers around the country doing what they could to rebuild devastated Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.

Judy Scarafile first went to Louisiana in 2005 immediately after Katrina as a pharmacist from the local Medical Reserve Corp to work on a Mobile Medical Team. Disorganization and bureaucracy almost deep-sixed that effort as the group of 80 volunteers sat in an Army camp for three days before being assigned. Communication was so lacking that Judy would be dispatched to the local Laundromat to “do her laundry” in hopes she could overhear state officials discussing the plan. It was apparent that Louisiana officials were resistant to accept help from outside. Once the work began, however, there was an obvious need and plenty to do keeping all eight mobile medical teams very busy.

Judy returned to the area with Peter last fall with the Madison, Conn., affiliate of Habitat for Humanity called Madison Cares. Their operation was based in Slidell. Before Hurricane Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29, 2005, Slidell, was considered a quaint and thriving bedroom community of New Orleans and nearby Metaire, and was home to 35,000 people. Katrina severely damaged or destroyed 85 percent of Slidell’s homes, churches and businesses. The community experienced an influx of population to 90,000, unlike other communities that experienced a decrease, largely due to evacuation from New Orleans.

The contrast in organization from the Scarafiles’ first trip to their second was remarkable. Their group of 12 from Connecticut and Massachusetts worked on three houses in three stages of build and became so skilled that they modestly referred to themselves as the Vinyl Siding Specialists of New England. The Scarafiles returned from that experience not only knowing that the Red Sox had prevailed but that the volunteers had been a small part of the progress that is indeed being made in Louisiana. Their enthusiasm was so contagious that St. Mary’s priest Rev. Steve Smith asked them to consider organizing a group of parishioners for a return trip.

So we are going – a total of 14 of us - with varying levels of skill sets, experiences and expectations to the East St. Tammany Parish and Slidell, Louisiana. It may indeed be a trip of a lifetime.

Barnstable Town Councilor Ann Canedy will file further reports from Louisiana.

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